James Marcus, a Goldman Sachs banker who became managing director of the Metropolitan Opera in 1976 and chairman ten years later, has died at 85. A critic of Peter Gelb’s he called the 2009 Tosca ‘the worst production I’ve seen in my life.’ The following year he made a demonstrative $10 million gift to Juilliard, the Met’s neighbour.

James Marcus

The Swiss-based Chilean virtuoso Catalina Vicens has run a successful crowdfunding campaign to enable her to release a recording on a 16th-harpsichord at the National Music Museum, in Vermillion, South Dakota.

The instrument is claimed to be the oldest of its kind still in play. But is it?

Harpsi-friends, help us out, please.

Meantime, enjoy Catalina.

catalina vicens

The composer’s mansion at Bayreuth was shut five years ago for refurbishment. It was due to reopen for the 2013 bicentennial festival but that date came and went, as costs mounted to 20 million Euros.

The latest inauguration deadline is July 26 this month, but the town of Bayreuth has announced legal action against the museum director, Sven Friedrich, and he’s fighting back with a counter-suit.

Meanwhile, the house next door which belonged to Siegfried Wagner is planning to open for the first time to the public with an exhibition of Adolf Hitler’s happy times at home with the Wagners.

Oh, never a dull day in Bayreuth.

hitler bayreuth

The Manchester pianist David Schofield was among the holidaymakers at Sousse when an Islamist gunman began his deadly assault on the resort. David writes:

 

david scho

On Friday 26th June, I was in Tunisia staying at the Royal Kenz hotel with my girlfriend. We were sunbathing by the pool at our hotel (about 200 metres from the beach) when staff started to usher us inside. We started to make our way towards the hotel when a grenade went off. Nicole and I feel so incredibly lucky that we made the decision not to go to the beach that day and our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected.
 
We were able to get on one of the first flights back to the UK and since landing have wanted to help in some way. Being a concert pianist, I didn’t really know what I could do. After some thought I decided to record a charity single “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” which will be available exactly 2 weeks after the incident on Friday 10th. ALL profits are going to the Red Cross.

He was principal cello with Pierre Boulez at the BBC Symphony Orchestra and with Neville Marriner at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, flitting from one style to the other without turning a hair. He also played on the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album.

Denis Vigay, one of London’s most enterprising and influential cellists, has died at the age of 89.

Our condolences to the family. A short life history below.

denis vigay1
Denis is standing back row, 3rd from right

 

 

Denis Vigay died on 27 June 2015. He was 89.

Born in Brixton in 1926, he came from a musical and theatrical family. While a pupil at Battersea Grammar School, he and his close friend Dennis Lewell set up a schoolboy orchestra, the Tooting Bec Orchestra, to raise funds for charity.

At the age of fifteen, he was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Cedric Sharpe and played in the First Orchestra under Henry Wood. His studies were interrupted by military service. He was part of ENSA and in the band of the Royal Engineers. At the end of the war, he was posted to Naples where he would sell his cigarette coupons to buy tickets to the opera.

Having completed his studies at the RAM, he became principal cello of the Sadlers Wells Opera Orchestra. In the days still of heavy smogs, a performance of La Traviata had to be abandoned when the conductor could no longer see the stage on account of the fog that had seeped into the theatre.

In 1956, he became principal ‘cello of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Having returned to London, he was appointed principal ‘cello of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and was principal during the Boulez years, regularly participating and also playing as a soloist in the Proms.

He went on to become principal ‘cello of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and a member of the Academy Octet, making many recordings and touring all over the world. Denis had an extensive freelance career, working with most major orchestras including the Boyd Neel Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, on soundtracks to major British and American movies and on albums with the Beatles such as Sgt Pepper.

He taught at the Royal Academy of Music and was tutor for many years of the cellists of the National Youth Strings Academy. He married Greta in 1952. She died in 2014. They are survived by their three children, Martin, Karen and Teresa. Martin has for many years been a member of the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

 

 

Very few western journalists were invited to the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition, a symptom of troubled times. Among those who got in was the Spectator’s Russian-speaking ballet critic, Ismene Brown.

Ismene, a terrific journalist, made a beeline for the brilliant Lucas Debargue and discovered that he spoke English – self-taught, of course, like playing the piano. He said, he learned it by reading Joyce’s Ulysses….

He told me that he was quite happy playing jazz eight hours a day to earn the money for his classical studies. His finger technique, honed in jazz, is so odd, so individual, that an eminent Russian piano teacher actually walked out of his Tchaikovsky concerto.

Read Ismene’s full report here.

Lucas_Debargue

The Azerbaijan foreign ministry has declared the Russian soprano Ljuba Kazarnovskaya an ‘undesirable person’. Her offence, apparently, is that she teaches in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ljuba, who has sung at the Met and recorded for DG, is the 300th in a list of personalities banned by the Azeris for territorial reasons. The most famous is Montserrat Caballe.

ljuba kazarnovskaya

 

volkstheater

photo: Kulturamt der Stadt Wien
Meet Anna Badora, new director of Vienna’s Volkstheater. She has just convinced the city to change her seats with a dramatic demonstration of health-and-safety issues.

A persistent viral illness has knocked the celebrated soprano out of Baden-Baden, where she was due to make her role debut as Countess Almaviva in Marriage of Figaro on July 16 and 19.

Luxury swap: Sonya Yoncheva steps in.

Yannick conducts.

Damrau, Diana_Michael Tammaro_2_300dpi

We’ve had a definitive update from Shelley Sharpe of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra to a weekend post:

In response to the article “Canada names woman music director, (not) only its second,” I feel obliged to point out there have been many orchestras with women music directors in our great nation, not the least of which is the Windsor Symphony Orchestra—Susan Haig was our music director from 1991 to 2000.

Also:

Agnes Grossmann – Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal (1986-1995) and Artistic Director of the Toronto Chamber Players (1984-1991)

Jeanne Lamon – Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (1981 – 2014)

Anne Manson – Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (2008 – present)

Rosemary Thomson – Okanagan Symphony Orchestra (2011 – present)

Special mention should go to Keri-Lynn Wilson, a Canadian woman at the helm of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Together with Tania Miller and Ms. New (pictured), there are four active female music directors in Canada at the moment, and Maestras Grossman, Haig, and Lamon who all made a tremendous impact on the orchestras they led.

gemma new

 

We have the official statistics. More than 9 million people watched the Medici broadcasts worldwide.

Here’s the breakdown:

1. Russia: 29%

2. China & Taiwan: 14%

3. USA: 13%

4. Germany: 5%

5. France: 4%

6. Ukraine: 3%

7. Japan: 3%

8. South Korea: 3%

9. Canada: 3%

10. Spain: 2%

Rest of the world: 21%

putin tchaikovsky competition2

In the past couple of months, AskonasHolt have taken on:

Karina Canellakis (conductor)

Anatoli Sivko (bass)

Stanislav Kochanovsky and Nicholas Carter (conductors)

Johannes Moser (cellist)

Oliver Johnston, Otar Jorjikia, Dmytro Popov and Gyula Rab, (tenors)

Alison Balsom (trumpet).

alison balsom pop up

Today they added Antonello Manacorda (conductor).

Who’s next?